Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Finding my passion

Well, well you’d think that I haven’t been up to anything since I haven’t posted anything since summer, but that’s not the case. I’ve been neglecting a lot lately. I hardly had time to check my Facebook for a while :)

I just can’t believe it’s 2012 already. I spent all last year wishing 2011 was over. Ok, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. It’s wasn’t the worst year, but it wasn’t awesome either. The main reason I wanted 2011 to be over was because I wanted my student teaching to be over. 2 years ago I decided I wanted to change things up and become a teacher. That was all dandy until teachers started losing their jobs. Since my time was running out, I decided to sign up for student teaching. I figured nobody would hire me without experience anyways. And I was so not looking forward to student teaching. I couldn’t work at my current server job during the week because I usually got home around midnight. And that wasn’t good when you have to get up at 6. So that meant that I had to work at school during the week and at Buca Friday and Saturday nights. So I got to work 13 hrs. on Friday. See how excited I was.

So on September 6th I showed up to school. I sat in the front of the class and watched the 5th graders stare at me like I had pink hair or something. After the first day I got tired of sitting and decided to walk around and help out. The kids would have rather been helped by the teacher, and they pretended like they didn’t hear me when I told them to do something. But then I wrote my first lesson plan and I was hooked. I put way too much thought in it, but it was rewarding.

The school I was at had 2 5th grade Reading/Writing teachers. Since my first lesson plan was writing, the teachers had me teach all of the classes. I was lucky that I had laid back teachers that were happy to guide me. So I went about my teaching, and the unexpected happened, I fell in love. I fell in love with teaching, with the students, with everything. I was hooked. All of a sudden my 3 months were up and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to leave. And the kids didn’t understand why I had to leave. I promised I would come back to visit and I’d be at their graduation. Then I said goodbye on December 5th. It’s funny how something I thought I would hate turned into the best thing I’ve ever done.

Right after I left, one of the 5th grade Math teachers moved to a different school. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like fate. I mean really, what are the chances?! Unfortunately this happened right before Christmas break. Then I got a text a couple of weeks ago that crushed my world. They had hired someone for the position. The district made the principle hire from a certain list, so I didn’t even have a chance. I was for sure I had the job, and then just like that it was gone. They say things happen for a reason, and I believe that, but sometimes it hard to see that when things like this happen. I have to believe that there is the perfect job waiting for me. And hopefully I won’t have to wait too long.